


After The Shooting Stars Have Gone

by likethenight



Series: Starless [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 20:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17189471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: Nymphadora Tonks can't quite believe that she's really married to Remus Lupin. But she knows he doesn't love her.





	After The Shooting Stars Have Gone

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in December 2010 in a small fit of HP-writing after seeing Deathly Hallows part 1. 
> 
> This was my attempt at fleshing out and figuring out the relationship between Tonks and Remus. I never felt the books did them justice, or presented their relationship in a convincing manner, so I thought I'd have a go at trying to work out what the characters might have been thinking.

Nymphadora Tonks can’t quite believe that she’s married – really married – to Remus Lupin. It still feels like a dream, almost, still feels unreal, and she hasn’t yet stopped wondering when she’s going to wake up.

'He's mine' she thinks, but she knows he really isn't. She isn't stupid. She knows where her husband's heart truly lies - in that chamber below the Ministry, on the other side of that archway, behind the veil with her always-beloved cousin Sirius Black.

She could think of his marrying her as a victory of sorts, but she knows it’s not. She hasn't won anything, and she never really wanted to. Tonks is not vindictive - one of the traits of the House of Black that she never inherited, thankfully - and the last thing she would have wanted would be to score a victory over Sirius by marrying the love of his life. She just can't help herself, she's in love with Remus Lupin. She knows he doesn't really believe her, she knows he doesn't think anyone could love him for himself - anyone except Sirius, that is, and it took him long enough to realise that Sirius didn't care who or what he was. But he is sweet and kind and patient, he is funny when he feels like it, when his sense of humour isn't entirely smothered by grief and bitterness, and he is strong, so strong. Tonks is in awe of his strength, the way he just keeps living in the face of everything that's happened to him. She admires him so much she thinks she might burst with it. And she does love him. She couldn't do anything else, couldn't want anything else than to be with him, to take care of him, to give him everything he wants that's within her power to give. Even though she knows that the one thing he wants above all else is the one thing she can't give him, and even if she could, it would mean giving him up for good. 

She would do it, though, she thinks, or likes to think, though when she really asks herself she isn't entirely sure how noble she could be, if there were some way of bringing Sirius back. Could she really hand him over to Remus and then stand back, feeling her heart splinter beyond repair as his mends itself again? She hopes she could, if only because she loves him and she hates seeing him so broken. Even though it stings and burns to know that there is nothing she can do to ease his misery.

She has been intensifying her family resemblance to Sirius for months now. It began as an unconscious reaction to his death, her grief manifesting itself in the lines of her face, but she has seen the way Remus looks at her, seen the recognition and the sad resignation in his eyes, and slowly it has become deliberate, almost habit, in the hope that it might bring him some comfort to know that she is not so far away from Sirius, after all. She has been suppressing her Black family features for almost as long as she can remember, but now she is letting them come to the fore; not in imitation, not because she is trying to be Sirius, and certainly not because she is trying to torment her husband by showing him his dead lover, but more in tribute to Sirius, in memory of the brightest and best of the House of Black, their one shooting star who flew higher and further than all the rest of that awful family's escapees. She did always worship her big cousin, after all. 

Sirius was the one who brought her sweets from Honeydukes that her mother tried to ration, one or two a day, but of course Sirius got round everything, charmed Andromeda into letting him babysit, and then spent happy evenings stuffing his little cousin full of chocolate frogs and every-flavour beans, pulling faces and making shadow puppets for her, grinning happily at her squeals of delight. Sometimes he brought his friends with him, handsome James, little scurrying Peter - Tonks still can't think of him without a shudder of disgust at what he did - and quiet, shy Remus. Remus was there the most, she thinks, those two were inseparable, and he was always tentative with her, as if he thought he shouldn't be there, as if he were afraid of doing something wrong, hurting her; but Sirius always called him a prat and pulled him into whatever boisterous game they were playing, and they would have the best time in the world until it was time for her to go to bed. Sometimes she would tiptoe back downstairs to fetch a glass of water, and when she peeped through the half-open living room door she would see them curled on the sofa together, arms around each other and Remus’s hands threading gently through Sirius’s hair. Once or twice she saw them kiss, and with the unconscious perception of small children she sensed that this was something secret, something she was not supposed to have seen.

She kept their secret. She never told a soul about her cousin and his friend, not then, not after everything went wrong and Sirius was suddenly gone, shut away in Azkaban and Never To Be Talked About Again. Not even after he escaped and came home, suddenly innocent and mad and broken beyond repair. She still hasn’t said a word, not even now that Sirius is gone again, fallen through the veil, and Remus is left alone again, aching and bereft. She doesn’t know how to tell him that she knows he’s in love with her cousin, that she’s known since she was tiny. But she does know, and she knows he’s not in love with her.

And she tells herself every day that it doesn’t matter. She’s in love with him, and that is going to have to be enough.


End file.
